


Post-Snap World: A Journey Around a Mourning Public

by MoonSilverSprite



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aliens, Death, Depression, Disasters, Family, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mortality, News Media, Newspapers, POV Outsider, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:27:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23233219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonSilverSprite/pseuds/MoonSilverSprite
Summary: A variety of newspaper articles written by the magazineHumanity Helper, archived and republished after Thanos was defeated and everyone returned. As the world's number one magazine focused on human interest stories (partly because every other big name went out of business), these interviews and analysis of the heroes behind reversing the Snap are being redistributed to the world.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to post this when _Black Widow_ came out on May 1st, but there you go.
> 
> To understand some parts in later chapters, you may have to read my stories 'The Puzzling Disappearance of Peter Quill'in the _Buzzfeed Unsolved_ section or my _Guardians of the Galaxy_ story 'Alien on the Milk Carton'.

This editorial of a post-Snap world (as the Avengers have taken to calling it) is a curious array of interviews and articles from across the country and beyond. A world plunged into mourning once half of our population was turned into dust – including the girlfriend of yours truly – caused a sudden disinterest in this magazine. However, as time passed, we became the first such publication to find the Avengers (the Sokavia Accords having been suspended during this time) and interview them.

Five years later and once the other half of the world returned in the blink of an eye – including half of our staff during a sales meeting and causing me to knock over my coffee – we found out that the Avengers themselves had brought this about.

Unfortunately, Tony ‘Iron Man’ Stark was killed in the conflict. Natasha Romanov, also known as the Black Widow, was declared dead, our only piece of information being that she was killed off-world. Steve ‘Captain America’ Rogers has also been declared dead. As a tribute, we have republished their original interviews - all by our top four reporters - in the year after the Snap in this issue.

We have also looked at the perspectives of the heroes after the incident. Those who gave us permission, at any rate.

Here at _Humanity Helper_ , we salute the brave souls who gave up their lives so that we could live.

(Editor of _Humanity Helper_ )

**Guilt, Woe and Endless Wandering: Tony Stark stays mum about what happened in space**  
**‘We Still Have Duties’: Natasha Romanov on helping those left behind**  
**75 years ago he was the face of America’s struggle for freedom. Now, he is the face of humanity’s hope for a brighter future. Steve Rogers tells all.**  
**From Feared Monster to Children’s Friend: Between Bruce and Hulk**  
**Back From the Dead: Family man Scott Lang’s first interview**  
**Alien Visitors: Was Peter Quill in SPACE for 30 Years?**  
**A Second Chance: Pepper Potts on what her husband sacrificed himself for**

**Guilt, Woe and Endless Wandering: Tony Stark stays mum about what happened in space**  
_Originally published November 27th 2018_

This Thanksgiving, there seems to be nothing to be thankful for. Tables are half-empty, families sliced in half and fewer friends have come over. There even seem to be half as many turkeys, cultivating in stockpiles of tofu – although the vegans who would have eaten tofu anyway don’t seem to mind too much.

But there is one silver lining to the half-empty Thanksgivings meals and it’s not just the tofu turkeys. People are beginning to see more of their neighbors, whom they otherwise would have walked by without a second glance in the streets.

This Thanksgiving, this intrepid reporter (who, to be honest, only got the job because the original reporter was Dusted and the next-in-line is now comatose from being run over by a horsebox) has found Tony Stark, hiding somewhere in New England. We were paid to not reveal the exact address, but I can assure my public that it seems to be a rather peaceful environment. And so it should be, as Tony Stark, when he finally stands on the porch with his pregnant wife Pepper Potts soothing his shoulder, appears to have the face of a war-torn veteran.

I introduce myself to them. Pepper smiles and nods, whereas Stark only mumbles a hello. I find myself looking at Pepper’s huge belly. I remember all of the young couples that I have seen in the past six months, deciding that time is short and they won’t lose this one as well. I ask, ‘How far along?’

Pepper shrugs. ‘Maybe six months,’ she replies, ‘I’m hoping for a girl. Well, Tony said he hopes for a girl.’ Mr Stark’s eyes flicker towards her. I wonder why he would have preferred a girl to a boy? Maybe it’s best not to ask. Everyone knows how Tony Stark’s father Howard isolated him before both Howard and Maria were assassinated in 1991. Perhaps he doesn’t want history repeating itself.

I, for one, would not blame Mr Stark.

I ask the question that is on everyone’s minds; what exactly happened on that day?

Stark looks up for a brief moment. Pepper, holding his hand, her face pale. I wonder for a second if they are about to ask me to leave. Pepper certainly seems as if she is about to.

But Stark puts his hand up, murmuring, “It’s okay, Pepper.” Then he looks at me directly.

“Alien forces were behind my disappearance. I – I ended up on another planet. These –“ he sighs, “bad guy aliens, if you want to put it bluntly, took me and a very special – doctor, I’ll say.”

A doctor? Like Banner, I wonder to myself.

Stark straightens up in his chair. “Then some – some good aliens (god, I sound like a narrator on a kids’ show) came along. They – they weren’t ones that had come to Earth before. Thor knew them. Apparently. Anyway, long story short – the alien that was behind the attack on New York in 2012 managed to get hold of this – weapon. And he snapped his fingers and turned half the universe into dust. There’s – really no other way to say it.”

Stark seems extremely unhappy. He sits on the porch beside Pepper, digging his nails into his clothes. He is in a complete trance, barely registering anyone is in front of him. Maybe he thinks he is somewhere else. Further away than any of us can know. In the deafening silence, his hands change position, as if holding something – or someone. His fists clench, unable to let whatever it is go. But what terrifies this reporter is that the world has never seen – and perhaps Pepper has never seen – Mr Stark so close to tears as this moment.

I begin to feel uncomfortable. I say that I should go and begin to get up from my chair. Pepper holds out an arm, telling me that ‘it’s fine’. But I can see the misery on Stark’s face already. It feels as if I am intruding on them. I asked if there was anything else that either of them wanted to say. Pepper shakes her head and tells me again that’s ‘it’s fine’.

This reporter doubts that, though. We may never know the whole story of what happened up in space. Stark doesn’t seem ready to tell. And I wonder if he ever will.

**‘We Still Have Duties’: Natasha Romanov on helping those left behind**  
_Originally published March 10th 2019_

**Natasha Romanov could be described as a formidable woman.** Raised as an assassin, working for the KGB, any chances of a normal life ruined for her, she is similar to some male counterparts in many ways. A soldier always looking for a fight; a sharp-eyed killer working for the good guys; a snarky, jovial personality to hide her inner torment.

And now a woman on a new mission. A mission to help those left behind.

“We brought a half dozen new girls to the orphanage today,” she tells me as she walks around what had once been a grocery store, now converted into a home for newly-orphaned children, “From New York City.”

A small girl totters up to Natasha as we talk. The girl can’t be more than seven or eight. Her dark hair is in lopsided pigtails and she holds a blue moth-eaten bunny close.

“Nikki,” she strokes her hair, “Why don’t you go and help out with the dinners today? It’ll give you something to do.”

With a lack of proper entertainment, the children grow bored more often than those of other age groups. Already I can see graffiti and dart holes in a wall still caked in grocery flyers. Older children throw stones into shop windows, even if they don’t loot anything. Most of the stores I saw back in Queens have cardboard plastered about.

“Sure, ‘Tasha,” she sucks the bunny’s ear and potters off to the kitchen.

Natasha sighs, running a hand through her hair. The red roots are just coming back now. she is beginning to resemble her former self; the woman who went on the run from the governments of the world after the disaster known as the Sokavia Accords.

“We get more kids each day,” she tells me, “We try to place them as best we can. It’s not just grocery stores than have been turned into orphanages. We ran out of schools and the hospitals are jam-packed. We had to take chairs from a hair salon and curtains from a movie theater – I had to use a drug addicts’ apartment for a family of four kids. His overdosed corpse was still there.”

I am about to ask about how they receive donations when I see an older girl reading to some children in a corner. The mats and bookshelves are stolen from a nearby school. The children don’t look as if they have bathed in weeks. The girl is leafing through _Where The Wild Things Are_ , a boy of four on her hip. She has short, wavy brown hair and a ton of freckles. Her clothes are hanging off her body and even wearing a belt does not help her.

She is also pregnant.

“How old is she?” I ask Natasha discreetly.

The Black Widow folds her arms and looks back at the teenager. “Tara arrived from New York a few days ago. She lost her parents in the Dusting. She’s fifteen next month.”

“How far gone is she?”

“Six months. Her best estimate. She knows the father. Says that he used to be a businessman on Wall Street before the Dusting.” Natasha seems firm when she tells me about Tara. Her nails dig into her arm.

I calculate that she became pregnant about two months after the Dusting. I ask, “If the father was working on Wall Street, why isn’t she there now-“

“I rescued some kids from New York. That’s all I will say on the matter.” She gabbles quickly, her head turned away from me.

Three of the other girls rescued from wherever it was in New York are in the kitchens. All of them are skinny, but none of them seem to be pregnant. One is fifteen, two are seventeen. They are all cuttings leeks and peeling potatoes. One girl lifts up her vest to scratch her back and I see a bruise the size of an orange. I must have stared because Natasha grabs me by the elbow and drags me along before the girls see me.

A few very young children are in the nursery. All of them are in donated cots, with older children (although the youngest was probably thirteen) or nurses by their sides. At the end of one cot I saw a notice saying ‘Billings Girl’. I ask Natasha what this means.

“It means she was recovered from a house where a family named Billings lived,” she explains, “Rescue workers went door-to-door to try and find children and pets left behind. And to see if the owners were alive or turned into dust. If they found a child, they brought them here. The Billings had a girl of that age and description, but we don’t know if it’s her because she can’t say her name.”

Then she grips her fingers around the bars of the cot, glancing down at the child, now chewing on their blanket. Her hands shake slightly and I wonder, as I look at her face, if she was going to cry. It certainly seems as if she will. It would be embarrassing for her, a trained assassin and determined woman, to cry in front of a reporter.

But we are interrupted by the sound of cans clanging to the tiled floor. I look over and see three children have been using them to build a Mayan pyramid. Natasha sighs and shakes her head in that way grown-ups do; humored, but disappointed.

“Sorry, Natasha.” They say in unison and scatter like birds.

“How many children live here?” I ask.

“Thirty-six,” she replies, “and this is just one orphanage. There’s a hostel in Boston catering to Sokovian refugees that exploded in number after the Dusting. It was so overcrowded – and there were numerous attacks from racists – that we offered to take all the children under ten here.”

I remember one of the attacks. Lebron Tyson famously smashed the front window with a crowbar, barricaded the only way out and assaulted the three women living in that room, sending two into hospital. He kept shouting ‘Communist b******!” at the victims. He was sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Our justice system is still at work, even if half of the judges are barely pre-law.

I can see four Sokovian children sitting at a blackboard. It’s a little kid’s blackboard, so they keep having to get up and alter the words written on it. They are learning English, with some difficulty. I wonder how much Natasha works with the translations. She does know almost every one of Earth’s languages. I quietly wonder if Thor has ever tried teaching her Asgardian.

"We have have duties," Natasha tells me as we walk over to the office, where the supplies used to be piled up, "The Earth's still here. We need to look after everyone left behind."

Some children are huddled around a television on top of a wheeled black trolley, the sort that my teachers used when I was in school. They are watching an old comedy movie. I don’t know if they even understand the jokes.

When I ask Natasha why they’re watching this, she looks wistfully off into the distance.

“Because in times like this, you either laugh or you cry.”

I wonder how much she has cried.

Because this is just one orphanage, in one town, in one state, in one country in the world and who knows how many more across the universe.

These children have likely lost their whole families. If it wasn’t for people like Natasha, I believe that a good majority of them – or at least the older females – would be in the same situation that Tara ended up in. if not, then they would be starving, homeless, killed in car accidents or drowned on beaches and by rivers as they fish for empty cans and discarded plastic.

“Sometimes it feels like the end of the world,” the Black Widow quietly says to herself, looking out of the window. I wonder if she really is talking to me or not. “I – don’t know if it is or not. If we’re going to go downhill after today. If tomorrow is ever going to get better or if everything’s going to go into disarray.”

I can see it on her face; she is scared. She turns away from me.

“Like it or not, this is the beginning of a new era. What sort of era? I have no idea.”

By the time I leave, I see her standing in the doorway, watching the car drive away. I ponder on what she has said. I can safely say now that there is no shame in crying. It is okay to be afraid. But we can't let that fear get in the way of surviving.

_All children's names have been changed._


	2. Chapter 2

**Back From the Dead: Family man Scott Lang’s first interview**

We all wondered exactly what happened at the Berlin airport. While some footage has leaked, we did not know the identity of the man who grew to an enormous height. All we were told was that he was Dusted.

However, this turns out not to be the case. Scott Lang, who has only agreed to this interview if we do not mention his family, was given the suit by renowned and later disgraced scientist Hank Pym sometime in 2015.

I meet Scott on a beach in San Francisco. He is sitting on a wooden bench and sipping at a Slush Puppy. The man seems quite ordinary. Then again, I remind myself, he is ordinary. He was a random burglar who came across a discovery created by Hank Pym.

“Not that I would recommend burgling anywhere,” he slowly replies, eyes looking around, in case he’s worried that a parole officer would suddenly jump out at him.

I give a small laugh. A sympathetic laugh, not one of mockery, I tell him just in case. He keeps looking down at his Slush Puppy, swirling the ice inside, as he answers, “I got it the first time.”

There is an uncomfortable pause before I ask him what his job is now. After the Snap a large number of people were made jobless. You’d think that getting rid of half the population would increase your chances of finding a job and it’s true that this has been the case for some people. But not so much family businesses. Now that everyone’s back there’s a bigger emphasis on small businesses.

“That’s what’s important,” Scott looks me in the eye, “Family. Everyone lost someone important to them. Even if it was just a pet. Family is – family is vital. I spent so much time trying to be a great dad to my daughter. When I could see her. I was under house arrest for two years and let me tell you, after the eighth month you want to batter down the walls with a can-opener you get so bored. But in that time I was with my little girl and –“ he twists his fingers together, “I may have been under house arrest, but those were the best two years of my life. So when I – I can’t provide all of the details, but I was trapped, against my will, somewhere for five years. And my daughter missed out on me. She – she grew into a woman without me by her side. And I’m not going to miss another second of being without her.”

Scott Lang is just an average citizen – albeit with a criminal record – who stumbled upon something enormous and because of that, he helped to save us all. Anyone can be an achiever, he says, finishing the last of his drink.

I jump when I see some ants walking along the bench. I try to swat them away, but Scott tells me not to. As I watch, the ants pick up the cup and carry it to the trashcan. I wasn’t even going to ask.

“So what do you do now, Scott?” I ask.

“Home security,” he replies, “A few friends and I were doing that before the Snap. We’re the best people for it; ex-cons usually are.”

I raise an eyebrow. “And nobody was uncomfortable about the fact that some ex-cons were refitting their homes?”

“None of us wanted to go back,” he shrugs.

I ask if his business has failed at all since everyone came back. He scratches the back of his neck. For a second I think that the ants have climbed up.

“Maybe a little worse off than before. It's the same with all of them."

"All of what?"

"Small businesses,” he sighs, “The family-owned restaurant? The local car wash? The mom-and-pop store? People abandoned them for 7-Elevens and McDonald’s. True, it’s cheaper. But at small stores, they actually care and don’t just make a pile of identical merchandise to throw at you. Think about it; Grandma’s homemade burger tastes miles better than something that looks like cardboard with mustard on.”

I snort. “You don’t say?”

He tells me about his daughter. She’s now in her teens. He feels terrible that he missed out on those years. She was so tiny when he left her, he explains. And now she’s grown up. When he came home, he felt awkward. Who were her friends? Did she have a boyfriend? Had her periods started yet? This wasn’t his little girl who owned a _Thomas the Tank Engine_ railroad set anymore. She was ‘unrecognizable’, he tells me.

“She wasn’t my little girl now. That – that broke my heart.”

Then he tells me that his company – well, four guys and a van – were reasonably okay. If only because burglaries rose during those five years. I remember an article about an apartment block being emptied of 372 rolls of toilet paper.

I look at the video he shows me on his phone of the four of them putting finishing touches. “We’re trying to do an advert,” he tells me, “It’s a start.”

I squint at the video, trying to work out the guy who sounds as if he’s on speed. “Wasn’t he in the parking lot?” I ask.

Scott makes a face. “I had to buy him a new van.”

At that point speed guy walks up. He looks at Scott and then talks for about twenty seconds about applying for some licence or other to ‘get ahead in the game’. Then he finally notices me.

“Oh, yeah, you had that reporter today,” he says to Scott while looking at me, “My buddy Scott here told you about saving the world? Yeah, it’s all cool and that. But it’s real scary, too.”

Then I ask, “Was it hard being accepted as a legitimate business in any way? Criminal records? Racial issues?”

The friend scowls at me. “If you’re saying it’s the race thing, then you’re racist for automatically assuming that.”

I put my hands up in a defensive gesture. I’ve really landed knee-deep in shit now. There were some race riots in cities across the world because ‘the wrong ones died’. It’s a load of garbage, I know – Los Angeles, London, Singapore and Cairo had it the worst.

He pauses for breath. Perhaps for the first time in his life. “No, it was usually the ex-con bit that put people off. Then it was the fact that we weren’t around for five years. I mean, I understand, dude; aside from Scott here none of us have families and the security businesses that did stick around have families to care for. I know that you need the money too…”

My phone mercifully rings and I say that I need to leave. As I go, Scott runs up to me and thanks me for the interview.

I just say that it was a pleasure talking to one of the people who saved the world.

**75 years ago he was the face of America’s struggle for freedom. Now, he is the face of humanity’s hope for a brighter future. Steve Rogers tells all.**  
_originally published May 26th 2021_

The world of 2018 was very different from the world of 1945, one would think.

But the world of 2021 brings back all those thoughts of keeping your chin up, to soldier through and of blitz spirit. Homelessness abounds and substance abuse is on the rise. The streets are abandoned, the cities’ inhabitants either having moved on or can’t find the ability to be joyful.

There is some positivity, however. Crime is down in America for the first time in years, not counting for the Dusting. Small communities are getting to know their neighbors a little better. Young and fit people deliver groceries to the elderly or infirm. Children play in school playgrounds instead of video games. They got bored, mainly, from what I hear, after the schools were closed in May 2018 and six months of video games will make you never want to see a console again.

And in the midst of all this, sitting by a Vietnam War memorial, is Steve Rogers.

“When I woke up they told me that America kept going to war,” he sighs, not even looking at me, “They lost every time.”

I know what he’s thinking, even if he won’t say it out loud. But we’re not gonna lose this time.

I ask him what he’s doing today. A simple question, but knowing the Avengers there won’t be a simple answer.

“I had a day off, so I went to a war reunion,” he tells me, “Iraq this time. I don’t really do much; they like to see me there. Keeps up hope, they say. Hope that there’s something after the fight.”

He fiddles with something in his hand. I don’t see what it is. I don’t wish to pry.

"There were a lot of angry crowds," he says, "At supermarkets. At grocery stores. Stealing all the food they could get. Most of them got rather violent. They had to send in the army in New York. I didn't like that, though; some of the soldiers saw it as an excuse to beat up random people without being punished. Then again, so did quite a lot of citizens."

I remember the food shortage worries. They had to work out schemes in Europe and Oceania, with delivery trucks going to people's houses. The Americans were against this. They called it communist.

“You know,” he folds his arms, “Every generation wishes they could go back and stop something. For my parents’, it was World War One. For mine it’s World War Two. For their kids’, it’s JFK.” He looks over at me. “For yours, it’s 9/11. And I guess for the kids out there, it’s the Snap.”

I ask him about what I have heard him doing. “Do you really go to support meetings?”

He nods. “Helps keep up morale.”

“That’s what they said in the Forties,” I give a small laugh and he does likewise.

“Yeah, that’s me all right,” he looks off into the distance, “Keep calm and carry on and fight in any way you can.”

“Support meetings,” I ask, “Do you go to a lot of them.”

He nods. “That’s one of the jobs I do,” Rogers scratches at the back of his neck, seemingly a little anxious, “But, err, we’re still heroes, you know.”

“Anything recent to report?” I ask him. He goes silent for a moment before throwing down a sheet of newspaper onto the bench. I pick it up. The headline reads ‘Thirty Women and Twelve Children Rescued in Vienna; Rumors of help from the Avengers’.

I read it. A month ago some women and children were being held in a Re-Population Effort house. Some eighteenth-century house that used to be a hotel before the Dusting. Most of them were Austrian or German, although a handful were Sokovian. The criminals had been rounded up and were being interrogated, I presumed, for information regarding other such places.

I would like to say that this was a one-off, but anyone who knows anything about the supposed Re-Population Effort would say otherwise.

How to explain this sick scheme carried out all over the world, by human traffickers – many of whom had operated before the Dusting? The best description would be somewhere between _Taken_ and _The Handmaid’s Tale_. Young women and girls being lured by bad guys offering jobs in the big cities. Some of their vehicles and stolen uniforms are from official companies. Some of the places they went to had genuine fronts, pretending to be hotels or family restaurants or taverns – avenues of business that went bust after the Dusting. Places that seemed welcoming and friendly to the average outsider.

They would trick their victims in one of two ways. The first was that the traffickers would invite their victims in – usually lone young women or mothers with small children – into their vehicles when they offered up jobs in the cities. To add to the ruse, they would often allow male relatives along with them. The lucky ones would be dropped off at another location first. The unlucky ones would be shot and their bodies buried in the desert or thrown into the sewers. Then the traumatized women and children would be taken along to places that seemed to be legitimate businesses, but were actually illegal brothels.

The second way was that some of the traffickers – usually pretending to be a young couple or grown-up siblings – would go to a campus or village or small town and invite ‘marks’ to their businesses. They would take the victims along to look around, arrange a date to move in, then bring along the unsuspecting group to the brothels in private parts of the buildings they were shown. Again, the lucky men were dumped alongside lonely roads in the middle of nowhere. As the victims had already signed fake contracts to say that they worked there and could not leave, providing ridiculous legal terms that are either outdated or completely made up (depending on the country and historic laws), the traffickers would lie and say that they worked for them now. The only reason the women go along with this is that they have a roof over their heads and won’t starve.

“Not all of the traffickers were bad guys before everything changed,” Rogers sighs, “Some campuses let their sororities stay free of charge if they sell their bodies.” He pulls a disgusted face. “And some high schools too.”

I remember a report from Congress released in March about overflowing orphanages and suddenly start to wonder if these overcrowded and underfunded places are a better or worse place for the children that come from these sickening arrangements.

Rogers seems to be reading my mind – I wonder if that was one of the abilities provided by the Super Soldier serum?

“Some of the men who visit these dumps – we sent someone in undercover before we made a move in Vienna – believe that they’re doing the world a favor. Not just wife-beating misogynists, either; the average Joe whose wife or girlfriend died in the Snap wants to provide for the future. If a woman becomes pregnant in these houses then their regulars are contacted and asked if any of them wish to take her in, since they’re most likely to be the father. A lot of them say yes. A lot of them lost their families. It’s far from acceptable and these men actually believe that they’re doing a good thing –“

He cuts off. “Have you ever seen _The Walking Dead_?”

“No.” I answer truthfully. I wonder if he has. I heard that he made a list of what he had missed while under the ice.

Rogers rubs his leg as he speaks. “The awful people on that show – the bad guys, the villains – weren’t always thieves and murderers and cannibals. They were made that way because of desperation. I’m not excusing the people who became traffickers or johns, far from it. What I am saying is that I _understand_ why. One of the men we arrested in Vienna said that he was coming back to buy a girl who was probably pregnant with his child. I asked him why and he said that if he married her, he’d let her finally say no.”

I shudder at the thought.

“How many more of these Re-Population Effort houses do you think there are?”

He sighs. “If a settlement is big enough to hide in, it’s got illegal brothels. It was that way before the Snap and that’s the way it is now.”

“Don’t you hate what you do? Going into places like that?” I ask.

Rogers looks me in the eye and I can truly see the soldier inside him. “And that’s what I need to do. I need to help heal the world. Because otherwise we might as well have all been killed.”

I wonder how many times he has said that line. It must have been to many different people in many different places.

I try to be a little cheerful. “My newspaper was working in Venice last week,” I tell him, “We saw swans in the canals.”

Rogers doesn’t say anything. He just gives off a wistful smile. The soldier inside him is still fighting for us.

I just wonder when he will rest.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the Peter Quill part of the story will make sense if you have read my other _Guardians of the Galaxy_ stories.
> 
> I am sorry for being so late, but I have been incredibly busy, under the weather and resisting the urge to punch the people I am confined with. This would probably explain why this chapter seems to wind off on an unhappy tangent.

**Peter Quill: Was he in SPACE for 30 Years?**

**At Humanity Helper, we do not tend to talk about true crime stories.** We usually cover human interest stories; issues affecting our current world or the true stories behind great events past and present.

But a rumor has been flying around the internet about one of the aliens who assisted the Avengers in saving the world. A video recovered from Tony ‘Iron Man’ Stark’s funeral caught a humanoid male’s face as he unknowingly looked towards the camera. This picture, circulated online, has had many suggesting that he is Peter Quill, a missing boy from St. Charles, Missouri who disappeared after witnessing his mother’s death from a tumor in a hospital thirty-five years ago this summer.

Upon first glance I can understand why. The video happens to be of good quality, unlike many pieces of evidence concerning Bigfoot or cities in the sky. (Although since the Chitari attack, the controversies have only deepened.) The alien directly faces the camera. A quick check from the NCMEC website of a picture of what Peter Quill would look like now is an almost perfect match, if the alien had been slightly thinner and his eyes closer together. Of course, I always found age-progressed photos to be rather creepy, along with reconstructions of unidentified bodies.

But I cannot deny that the similarities are there. In almost any other missing persons’ case, this would be thrown out as just a load of conspiracy garbage suited for nerds sitting at their desks under lamplight.

However, some circumstances behind Peter Quill’s abduction have implied alien abduction and this has been an argument for 35 years.

**Let’s start at the beginning.** Peter Quill was born on 1st March 1980 in St. Charles to Meredith Quill (1960 – 1988). The father is an unknown and the only clues to his identity are that he met Meredith when she was at college in Springfield, Missouri sometime in 1979.

Her life about this time seems to be a mystery. While she wrote home to tell her family that she had met someone, she would later refer to him as ‘an angel’ and that he ‘came from the stars’. Even now we do not know if this was her illness talking.

Meredith came back to St. Charles in August 1979. On one occasion she claims that the father came back around this time, but not after then.

Meredith’s parents helped to raise Peter and while they were upset at her having left her studies to become pregnant, they appear to have adored their grandchild. Meredith promised that when Peter was older she would go back to college. Sadly, this never happened due to Meredith being diagnosed with a tumor in her brain in 1984, when Peter was only four.

No-one knew where it had come from. There was no history of cancer in her family and Meredith didn’t smoke or take drugs, although realistically these would have caused problems in other parts of her body. The doctors believed that they had the tumor removed in the summer of 1986, but after she once again had troubling walking or staying awake, she was found to still have her illness.

Almost a year later, after having been moved into a hospice, the family were told they needed to say their final goodbyes. Meredith’s father had already agreed to be Peter’s guardian.

On August 30th 1988 Peter Quill was taken into his mother’s room to say goodbye. She handed him a wrapped present, which Peter placed inside his backpack. At 11.20pm Meredith passed away.

Peter began crying loudly. In their grief and confusion, the family sent him out of the room, expecting to see him again in a few minutes. His grandfather would go on to say that this was the worst decision of his life.

Footage from the security camera – one which has been shown on many documentaries and on unsolved mystery channels on YouTube and other such sites – depicts Peter running out of the doors into the hospice garden at 11.22pm. A bright light appears in the direction that he took. While most police, including law enforcement, would go on to say that this was probably the high beams from a truck or large car, the more open-minded among us have suggested aliens.

Of course, we have all seen this as utter nonsense. The likelihood of aliens abducting a random child, relatively close to a suburban area and by a building filled with people to boot is extremely unlikely, even after the existence of aliens was proven.

This was not helped by the number one suspect in Quill’s case attributing the disappearance to aliens. When Patrick Edward Glover (born 1960) was arrested in 1994 for the murders of eight children buried in his crawlspace, along with three more abductions and one murder in the five days he was on the run, Missouri State Police chose to look at him regarding two cases in Missouri, one of which was Peter’s. Glover, now on Death Row appealing against his sentence – since, as he was Snapped, says that he was technically declared dead and should not be executed – for twenty murders of children aged 7 to 17, claimed to have seen aliens during Peter’s abduction. A delivery driver, Glover was in St. Charles on the day Peter disappeared. He admitted to seeing a spaceship hovering over the hospice and taking a child up with a tractor beam. As the footage had not been shown to the public at that time, this caused conspiracy theorists to suggest that Peter genuinely had been kidnapped by aliens. However, the FBI and Missouri State Police still listed Peter as a possible victim.

Until now, that is.

Days after the Great Return, (or the Blip, or one of the other common uses across the world to describe the decimated half of the population returning) Quill’s case was removed from the FBI database, along with his file on the Missouri State Police website and a number of amateur missing persons’ websites. His picture is still up on the NCMEC and there has been no public explanation as to why this could have happened.

This seems unusual and has only made conspiracy theorists bicker even more concerning what has happened to him. If Glover had indeed confessed to killing Peter in a state of remorse after being given a second chance at life then his case would realistically still be left up on the amateur websites in the closed cases section. Perhaps the law enforcement agencies have been told what really did happen to Peter. His family certainly isn’t talking, if they know anything. This is bizarre since they have tried for thirty years to keep his case in public view, but seem to simply clam up.

Whatever the answer is, until we have a firm confirmation as to what happened to that little boy thirty-five years ago we can only guess.

**From Feared Monster to Children’s Friend: Between Bruce and Hulk**

Bruce Banner has perhaps been the most controversial of the Avengers. A scientist whose experiment went awry and caused him to become a violent, rage-filled creature at a moment’s notice would be the sort of person you would tend to avoid.

But after he spent two years in space – a fact that this reporter is still getting his head around – Banner was able to somehow combine the two halves inside him into a whole again, with the effect of making him large and green permanently, but still keeping Banner’s personality in control.

“This is confusing,” I say as we sit at a metal bench at the restaurant, the first words I have managed to say since coming face to face with the creature that caused my daughter to wet herself when she first saw him on the TV screen ten years ago.

“These are confusing times,” he shrugs as he munches a taco, “Everything’s topsy-turvy. We want the world of 2018, heck, maybe even the world of long before then, back when I was a kid. But we’re not getting it back. Throughout history, animal and man have learnt to adapt.” He takes another bite of his taco, the meat slopping out onto the polished table, “Half the world’s gone. Half the universe is gone. Developed countries are bickering over long-term plans as their people are suffering. Rampant sickness has caused people in the Third World to drop like flies or asking for aid when they know the West are struggling themselves. And as for the Middle East –“ he shudders, “Russia has their eye on Eastern Europe again. Japan has their eyes on China again. The United States are barely functioning. True, in 2018 we were barely holding the world together. But we didn’t need this.”

It’s a bit strange talking about evolution and economics with someone resembling a nerdy Shrek.

He finishes his taco, licking the sauce from his log-like fingers. “Don’t waste, that’s what they’re all saying, and it’s good advice, too. You know,” he leans over and I have to shuffle up so I can still breathe, “these greens? Picked from fields outside the city.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Yeah, they cultivated some unused fields,” he tells me, sitting up again, “Jobless and homeless people were told to work the farmland. Historically, the amount of farmland would equate to the number of trees chopped down and animals fleeing the area. But it’s not so much now. Now that Britain’s free from the EU, they created a whole new load of environmental laws. Plant every single seed from their fruit. If they don’t have a garden, trucks come along and plant the seeds in the country. It’s a dull, slow job but someone’s got to do it.”

He then looks thoughtful for a few seconds. “In some of these fields, people found archaeological remains. Weapons, pottery, coins, anything you can think of depending on the country’s history. That’s one important part of being a scientist. You need to look to the past, to be aware of their mistakes, to value the good people did even in their darkest days, to make a brighter future. "The past cannot be changed, no matter what you do, no matter how much we want to right a wrong. But you can learn from it. Rome fell, but people still carried on. London burnt, but they rebuilt it. The Barbary pirates were ravaging the Mediterranean, but America banded with the European nations to stop them. Change is a part of history. It’s unavoidable.”

He can already see that I can’t comprehend a word he is saying. He sighs and rests an elbow in the table. “Maybe I’ll tell you what other stuff I’ve been doing.”

He calls out to the children sitting in a booth nearby. I lean over and notice that they are all wearing the same uniform. I recognize it as one of the esteemed schools in the area that shut down after the Snap. I then release that the clothes must have been donated. They seem rather threadbare and messy.

“How old are they? Should they be there by themselves?” I ask Banner.

“Oh, I brought them here. I thought that they’d want a separate booth from us. I’m paying for the main meal. We made a deal; the kids are going fifty-fifty on the dessert and drinks.”

I look over at the group of children again. “Where exactly are they from?” I ask.

Banner’s face falls. I think about my colleague’s visit to Romanoff’s orphanage. I also think about the Avengers’ work in helping the less fortunate, which included their raids on Re-Population Centers. I must have looked as green as Banner at that moment because he gave a small, strained chuckle.

“They’re from a re-housing program,” he explains, “It’s a little like the orphanages, except that the children there are mostly all related. And mostly from the Re-Population Centers.”

“Those kids were at Re-Population Centers?” I can’t hide the disgust in my voice.

Banner quickly interjects, “Not like that. No, in about ninety-five percent of the cases where a woman came attached with children the people in these rings would let the kid stay with the mom. They’d have the children carry out chores, run errands and the like. Some of the school-aged children – elementary and middle-schoolers – went to work at a fast food cooperation. You heard about that, right?”

I certainly remember. Humanity Helper covered the exposé. A certain fast food company made a deal with the human traffickers by allowing young children to work in them. The reasoning behind this supposedly was that most children who worked in cities and large towns (never mind the fact that roughly half of the trafficked children came from small towns) would end up working in the food industry anyway. Since nobody even paid attention to OSHA regulations anymore, the large companies exploited their workers even more than usual.

Personally I wasn’t surprised that the company had been doing this, causing the whole chain to be shut down. I thought their mascot looked like a pedophile anyway.

“I’ve heard enough jokes about secret sauce to last a lifetime.” I remark. Then I ask, “What about the other five percent? Do they stay with their moms and sisters?”

Banner pales. It’s amazing that I could even tell. “I tend not to dwell on that. If you keep thinking about the ones you had no chance of saving in the first place then you feel even worse.”

Then he looks back at the group. Most of the children are playing board games. But a couple are milling around dumbly, not joining in. A girl holds a moth-eaten blankie to her face, even though she looks around nine or ten years old. A small boy of perhaps eight holds his legs close to his chest. An older, taller girl of maybe twelve leans against him, her long hair tickling his face. If I didn’t know better I would say that the way she curls her arms around his body suggests an attachment issue.

I can guess that these children were the ones that saw the frequent violence. I wonder what their lives had been like before the Snap. Loving nuclear family units, I imagine; two point four children, a house in the suburbs or a small town, a cat or dog prowling the back yard, baseball games and swimming classes,

Then the Snap. Where had these children been? The older girl might have been in school, possibly the younger girl as well. Half of their classmates disappear around them. The teacher, if they are still there, begins to try and calm the screaming children down. Cars crash on the road outside. Maybe explosions. The teachers don’t let the children out until the middle of the night, when they make sure that there are still people left for them to go back to. If not, as I had learnt, they would live at the school.

Days turn into weeks as some jobs become obsolete. Waiter, hairdresser, vet. Maybe their parents owned a small store in town that has gone out of business due to lack of customers. Maybe all of the food they sold has been taken off the shelves in panic buying that resembles the worst Black Friday ever and there is no more stock. The kids I am looking at now must feel even worse because chances are that their mom or sister – or, although less likely, aunt or cousin – is their only relative left.

Then there is an opportunity, somewhere to live in the city. They have somewhere to stay and possibly three square meals a day, all right. But there’s a price. A price that their new ‘landlords’ and ‘landladies’, as the children know them, say can only be achieved in one way. The child has to go to bed early after endless days slogging behind a fast food counter, a butcher’s or fishing farm or a sewing machine or food processor. If they don’t go to bed early, they see men – some with cigarettes or alcohol on their breath, some with large hands rubbing shoulders, some grandpa’s age and some just skinny college kids wanting to get laid – coming in as the fifth or sixth customer of the day.

The children start to wonder why Mommy or Sissy no longer smiles. Why she takes pills or uses a glass tube with smoke coming out or smells like drink.

Then one day they learn that they’ll be getting a new brother or sister, a niece or nephew. This, they are told, is the reason that Mommy and Sissy were brought here. Best case scenario – and the least likely – is that the three of them will now start a new, happier life with someone to support them. The worst one is that the child will have to spend the remainder of their young life as a babysitter while Mommy or Sissy pops out child after child until their uterus gives out, all because half of the world’s population turned to dust. Even worse is if said kid happens to be a girl. If they’re considered old enough, fourteen or fifteen years old if the traffickers are mean, they’ll be made to sell their body or risk the consequences.

This is how the Snap turned low-risk victims into overworked and underpaid slaves and strung-out, miserable prostitutes.

It’s much worse in the Third World. That much I can figure out. Maybe even on other planets; places that have messy births that result in dozens or hundreds of miniature aliens spewed over a swamp.

I turn and see the pained expression of Banner’s face. It’s creepy to see it on a green giant that had until recently been the stuff of nightmares. What is he thinking of? Miserable childhoods and terrified children? From what I have heard, Banner’s childhood, while not as unfortunate in some ways as these kids, was not a walk in the park.

Suffer the little children indeed.

“Is this –“ I struggle to find a word, “Is this normal for them? To be all quiet and shy?”

He shrugs. “It depends on the child. I tend to be popular. The smaller children like to climb on me. They can’t quite get my name right, so they end up calling me ‘bear’. Most of them love hearing about my time in space as a gladiator for an unbelievably flamboyant ruler.”

Despite everything, that was the weirdest sentence I had heard that day.

I thank him for his time and leave. As I do, I hear Banner making his way to the children and they begin clamoring for attention. Despite the fact that they might have no-one in the world, these children are beginning to have happiness again.

I suppose it’s something.


	4. Chapter 4

**A Second Chance: Pepper Potts on what her husband sacrificed himself for**   
_Published 1st September 2023_

For half of humanity, we had to try and go about our daily lives, despite the agonizing feeling of loss all around us. Our loved ones had dissolved, turned into dust in front of our eyes. Our parents, our children, neighbors and friends. We demanded answers and then the Avengers gave us one.

There was nothing they could do. The dead were gone forever.

Then, five years on, the dusted half of humanity reappeared, just as suddenly as they had gone. Unaware of any time passing, many of whom still in the same place.

A miracle, some would say.

The world rejoiced. Parties were held, there were messages of hope provided by the Vatican and at other religious sites, the opportunity of a second chance had presented itself.

Those that had reappeared were caught up in a blur of confusion and fear. Parents had missed out on their children’s lives. Children wondered why their parents were hugging them tightly. Friends and neighbors had either left or were distant and unknown, having spent five years without them.

Then we heard the news of what caused this event. Once again, it was delivered to the world by the Avengers. Or what was left of them.

For the defenders of the Earth had been hit badly in their recovery mission. We may never know the whole story, perhaps the records of which are locked away in a vault rivaling the final scene of _Raiders of the Lost Ark_. But what we do know is that we lost three members of the original six.

Antony Stark. Natasha Romanoff. Steve Rogers. All three sacrificed their lives so that we could have our lives back – both physically and metaphorically.

Only Tony Stark was able to have a funeral. We were told of this the day after, the footage of which was leaked online three weeks later. Stark’s widow was furious at this and attempted to have it pulled, but copies of the footage were already circulating all over the web.

It has taken almost five months, but Ms Potts has finally agreed to speak to us.

She did so after she had dropped her daughter off at school.

“He should be here,” she tells me as she walks onto the patio after exiting her car and unlocks the door, “It was her first day at pre-k today. No dad should have to miss that.” Then it hits her that there were scores of parents out there that missed their kids’ first days of schools. She holds up a hand and shakes her head, her ponytail flying. “Sorry, I must sound so selfish.”

“You don’t,” I persuade her, but I’m not sure if it worked.

When we sit down in the living room, I ask her if she wants to talk about it. She pulls a loose strand of hair behind her hair and puts her slippered feet up onto the couch.

“I – I wasn’t involved in the actual – recovery itself. But I did participate in the battle afterwards.”

“Battle?” I ask.

She purses her lips. I gather that the whole circumstances are all hush-hush, so I try not to pry any further.

But what Ms Potts does tell me is still fascinating. She was able to tell me that the alien that had caused all of the untold damage (“Wait, I thought he was dead?” I asked. “Long story,” she replies) had come to Earth when the Avengers had taken hold of the device that had caused the original decimation (“I thought –“ “Long story.”).

There had been an army of various alien species fighting against the Avengers and their allies. All I was told was that the battle involved Asgardians, Wakandans and magicians alongside other alien races brought to Earth by portals. After a long and hefty fight, Tony Stark had gotten control of the device and turned the alien and his armies to dust, with the energy from said device causing Mr Stark to die within minutes.

The word ‘speechless’ would not be enough to describe how I felt.

“He sacrificed himself for all this,” her voice is now hoarse and she sips at a glass of water from the coffee table, “For everyone that was lost an-and everyone that was left behind. The actual way of gathering the – important parts of the device – was incredibly risky and there was only an incredibly slim chance that they would make it back. But I told Tony – I told him to do it. He didn’t want to lose everything he now had. I convinced him that he had to go. Because as terrible as a world we were living in now and the great risks this involved, we couldn’t live in a world where the bad guys win.”

After an endless pause, I ask Ms Potts what she had been doing over the summer. A simple question, but no simple answer.

“He’d want me to raise our daughter,” she tells me, “Not rush around and be absent like his parents were. But – the others have been helping. The ones that want to, that is.”

By ‘want to’, I know she means the members of the Avengers that still have families to go back to.

“So who goes around helping the world?” I ask, although I think I might know the answer.

She looks at me blankly for a second, before her face breaks out into a smile. “We try. We try to help everyone.”

I ask Ms Potts how her daughter is getting on in school. She straightens up in her seat and at that very moment sounds more like a proud parent than anything else.

“She’s doing quite well. Nobody knows that she’s Tony’s daughter. That way she’s just like the other kids. She’s a bit frustrated at the number of other children there, though.”

“Because she was brought up in semi-isolation?” I ask.

Ms Potts shakes her head, the corners of her mouth turning upwards. “No, she’s fine with the other children. What I meant was that her classroom has forty-five kids all clamoring for attention.”

“Forty-five?” I ask, surprised.

“About fifteen of them were Dusted,” she explains, a hint of exhaustion in her voice, “They’ve brought in extra teachers and child psychologists to even begin to handle the problem. The thing is, the children are too young to understand why all their friends are in fourth grade or why their parents are cautious about letting them out of their sight. It’s a complete nightmare. Some children don’t even have homes to go back to, with parents having committed suicide or becoming homeless since another family is now living there.”

I have to admit that this is a massive problem. Homelessness, searching for lost relatives and abandonment is bad enough for adults, but for children...It seems horrendous for me.

I try to offer Ms Potts some good news that I heard, which might cheer her up slightly. “According to records, the names Tony, Steven and Natasha and all variants of those names are the most popular among newborns across the world. And Miracle is the most popular middle name in the States.”

She gives a snort of laughter. “At least they’re not calling their kids Vision.”

Then she tells me, "I just don't know what sort of life is waiting for her at school. Everything must be very different after the Snap."

I remember an incident from Queens six months ago, just a few weeks before everybody came back. Some eager Re-population Effort snatchers had been trailing a school bus in an attempt to make deals with the teachers. They even tried to open the doors on the bus where the students were sitting. One of the teachers was caught on camera wielding his umbrella, screaming something like, 'There will be no more kids lost under my watch!" and beating off the criminals. I have no clue what happened to the snatchers, though.

"I really have no clue," I tell her truthfully, "Maybe they'll have classes outdoors. It's good to teach them about the world around them."

As I get up to go, I ask Ms Potts one last question.

“Do you think that your husband’s sacrifice was for the greater good?”

She pauses in thought. Then she nods.

“If it was to make the world better, I certainly think so.”


End file.
